The journey of 465 miles ended when 2,200 runners filed into the Peoria Civic Center on Saturday in various states of exhaustion and sleep deprivation.

They came from as far as Memphis, Tenn. — the headquarters of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital — and as near as North Peoria with one goal: to raise money for the children and families battling childhood cancer.

The Memphis to Peoria run raised $1,000,808.08, breaking the $1 million barrier for the first time since Peoria County Sheriff Mike McCoy and several others came up with the concept 33 years ago. All 35 separate runs combined raised $4.1 million.

McCoy received a phone call Saturday from a friend, who knew the group was just shy of the $1 million figure and made an anonymous donation to send the group over the top.

“He says, ‘You got it,’ and then he sent me a text that says, ‘One crazy idea.’ That made me feel so proud,” McCoy said. “It’s not about Mike McCoy. It’s about all of these people.”

Thousands watched as the 2,200 ran together into the Peoria Civic Center, but the audience did not see the countless moments the runners shared between Memphis, Chillicothe, Chicago or one of dozens of satellite locations and their destination that give meaning to the feat.

Like Wednesday morning, when sisters Jenessa and Jeleighsa Hamilton ran three miles just after sunrise along U.S. Route 51 toward Tamaroa wearing bandanas and plastic shells to honor their nephew Ryan “Maddy” Nimmo, who passed away in January of a neuroblastoma. He was 4 years old and loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Or the moment of silence runners observe every six miles when one group returns to the RVs and another takes to the road, and the only sound is the endless list of patient names who won or lost their battle with childhood cancer at St. Jude.

Or a stop in Assumption, pop. 1,168, where residents greeted the runners with homemade cinnamon rolls and $17,600 in donations.

Or when Samantha “Sam” Jones, a 13-year-old Dunlap girl and St. Jude patient, thanked the runners before their departure from the Memphis hospital, without hair but with a beaming smile.

“I started out running for Sam, but now I’m running for all of the kids. That’s been the evolution of this experience and going down there,” said Molly Waller of Dunlap, Jones’ aunt and first-year runner on the Memphis to Peoria run.

Every one of the runners has a unique reason for supporting St. Jude.

They are survivors, former patients such as Dawn Harper, who was told as a young patient she would never walk again and now is a veteran of the tri-state St. Jude run .

Page 2 of 2 - They are family members, thankful for the renewed life of their child, their brother, sister, friend.

Some, like Kevin Pautler, run in hopes another family won’t be torn apart by cancer like theirs when the battle is lost. Pautler has run each year since his son Dusty, 16, died in 1991.

They are strangers, who come together to run for those who can’t.

Laura Nightengale can be reached at 686-3181 or lnightengale@pjstar.com. Follow her on Twitter @lauranight. Find her St. Jude fundraising page at peoriaruns.stjude.org/lauranight.

CORRECTION: The St. Jude runs raised $4.1 million, a figure that included the more than $1 million raised in the Memphis to Peoria run. There were 35 separate runs that raised money for St. Jude. A previous version of this story gave incomplete fund-raising totals.